Psychopathy and Moral Understanding

1979 ◽  
pp. 165-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Duff
Keyword(s):  
Moral Understanding

Toward a New Moral Understanding of the Tudor Conquest of Ireland

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
William Palmer
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Extreme Violence ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Moral Behaviors

The English conquest of Ireland during the sixteenth century was accompanied by extreme violence. Historians remain divided on the motivations behind this violence. This article argues that the English violence in Ireland may be attributed to four main factors: the fear of foreign Catholic intervention through Ireland; the methods by which Irish rebels chose to fight; decisions made by English officials in London to not fund English forces in Ireland at a reasonable level while demanding that English officials in Ireland keep Ireland under control; and the creation of a system by which many of those who made the plans never had to see the suffering they inflicted. The troops who carried out the plans had to choose between their own survival and moral behaviors that placed their survival at risk.

scholarly journals Psychopaths and Symmetry: A Reply to Nelkin

Philosophia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Talbert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Competence ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Symmetry Argument ◽  
Moral Blame

AbstractAn agent is morally competent if she can respond to moral considerations. There is a debate about whether agents are open to moral blame only if they are morally competent, and Dana Nelkin’s “Psychopaths, Incorrigible Racists, and the Faces of Responsibility” is an important contribution to this debate. Like others involved in this dispute, Nelkin takes the case of the psychopath to be instructive. This is because psychopaths are similar to responsible agents insofar as they act deliberately and on judgments about reasons, and yet psychopaths lack moral competence. Nelkin argues that, because of their moral incompetence, vices such as cruelty are not attributable to psychopaths. It follows that psychopaths are not open to moral blame since their behavior is only seemingly vicious. I have three aims in this reply to Nelkin. First, I respond to her claim that psychopaths are not capable of cruelty. Second, I respond to the related proposal—embedded in Nelkin’s “symmetry argument”—that a “pro-social psychopath” would not be capable of kindness. My responses to these claims are unified: even if the psychopath is not capable of “cruelty,” and the pro-social psychopath is not capable of “kindness,” the actions of these agents can have a significance for us that properly engages our blaming and praising practices. Finally, I argue that Nelkin’s strategy for showing that moral competence is required for cruelty supports a stronger conclusion than she anticipates: it supports the conclusion that blameworthiness requires not just moral competence, but actual moral understanding.

Expanding Moral Understanding

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Moral Understanding

Art, narrative, and moral understanding

1998 ◽  
pp. 126-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noël Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Moral Understanding

Moral agents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinit Haksar
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Strong Version ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Concern For Others

Moral agents are those agents expected to meet the demands of morality. Not all agents are moral agents. Young children and animals, being capable of performing actions, may be agents in the way that stones, plants and cars are not. But though they are agents they are not automatically considered moral agents. For a moral agent must also be capable of conforming to at least some of the demands of morality. This requirement can be interpreted in different ways. On the weakest interpretation it will suffice if the agent has the capacity to conform to some of the external requirements of morality. So if certain agents can obey moral laws such as ‘Murder is wrong’ or ‘Stealing is wrong’, then they are moral agents, even if they respond only to prudential reasons such as fear of punishment and even if they are incapable of acting for the sake of moral considerations. According to the strong version, the Kantian version, it is also essential that the agents should have the capacity to rise above their feelings and passions and act for the sake of the moral law. There is also a position in between which claims that it will suffice if the agent can perform the relevant act out of altruistic impulses. Other suggested conditions of moral agency are that agents should have: an enduring self with free will and an inner life; understanding of the relevant facts as well as moral understanding; and moral sentiments, such as capacity for remorse and concern for others. Philosophers often disagree about which of these and other conditions are vital; the term moral agency is used with different degrees of stringency depending upon what one regards as its qualifying conditions. The Kantian sense is the most stringent. Since there are different senses of moral agency, answers to questions like ‘Are collectives moral agents?’ depend upon which sense is being used. From the Kantian standpoint, agents such as psychopaths, rational egoists, collectives and robots are at best only quasi-moral, for they do not fulfil some of the essential conditions of moral agency.

Toward a New Moral Understanding of the Tudor Conquest of Ireland

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
William Palmer
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Extreme Violence ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Moral Behaviors

The English conquest of Ireland during the sixteenth century was accompanied by extreme violence. Historians remain divided on the motivations behind this violence. This article argues that the English violence in Ireland may be attributed to four main factors: the fear of foreign Catholic intervention through Ireland; the methods by which Irish rebels chose to fight; decisions made by English officials in London to not fund English forces in Ireland at a reasonable level while demanding that English officials in Ireland keep Ireland under control; and the creation of a system by which many of those who made the plans never had to see the suffering they inflicted. The troops who carried out the plans had to choose between their own survival and moral behaviors that placed their survival at risk.

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